The Cenci

Antonin Artaud’s The Cenci, now getting a rare revival by the Hotel Savant companyt at the Ohio Theater, may have shocked audiences in 1935. But today, little about this portrait of a sexually voracious and sadistic Italian nobleman’s exploits stuns. Neither does Artaud’s dramaturgy — which eschews psychological realism and slavish fidelity to a text in order to assault the senses through image and gesture. Still, there is much to recommend in John Jahnke’s über-stylish, if uneven, production.

The nobleman in question here is Count Cenci (Anthony Torn), who has two of his sons murdered and rapes his daughter, Beatrice (Lauren Blumenfeld). In revenge for these acts and others, Beatrice and stepmother Lucretia (Anna Fitzwater) and brothers Giacomo (Kobi Libbii) and Bernardo (Alexander Paul Nifong) plot his murder in the fortress in which he decides he will torture them both physically and psychologically. This woebegone group hopes that they might turn to the pope and his designees for support, and for a brief while, it looks as if Orsino (Mauricio Tafur Salgado), who was engaged to Beatrice before taking his vows, and Camillo (Todd D’Amour), who’s involved sexually with Giacomo despite his having taken his vows, might help. But ultimately, these two men of god turn against Beatrice and the others, driving home one of Artaud’s chief tenets: Justice in this world — be it religious or civil — is a near impossibility.

Much of this sort of action and thematic content can be found in plays from England’s Jacobean age, but The Cenci diverges from these earlier works, reveling its jagged dramaturgy, which includes abrupt declamatory speeches (newly translated by Richard Sieburth) in which characters decry their world or describe their actions and almost random plot twists. When Artaud’s play is layered with Jahnke’s artistry — including gorgeously formalized blocking, haunting tableaux, and judicious use of amplification and echoing of the performers’ voices (the superlative sound design is by Kristin Worrall) — it becomes a taut tour through this Italian family’s tragedy, one that often can make the pulse race in a sort of slasher film-like way.

While the production — which also includes Peter Ksander’s rat-race like maze scenic design of twisting palace hallways and Miranda K. Hardy’s dramatically atmospheric lighting design — looks gorgeous, it does have its languors. Certain themes, such as corruption within the church, are hammered repeatedly. Additionally, when the action shifts too quickly, such as an early banquet scene in which performers assume second (and third roles) while masked, it’s difficult to not be left at sea.

The unevenness extends to the performers, some of whom handle the demands of the text and production more sure-handedly than others. Both Torn and Fitzwater ably balance the piece’s mix of comedy, which sometimes borders on camp, drama, and melodrama with aplomb. However, Blumenfeld delivers a curiously wooden, one-note performance that can stall the action as the play progresses and Beatrice’s need for revenge becomes more acute. Both Salgado and D’Amour, as the very worldly priests, are more successful, but their performances also lack some of the precision that makes the two men at the head of the Cenci clan so successful.